DECIPHERING DC
Writers: Dan Jurgens, Roger Stern, Jerry Ordway
Artists: Dan Jurgens, Kerry Gammill, Jerry Ordway, George Perez, Dennis Janke, Brett Breeding, Art Thibert and Andy Kubert
Collects: Adventures of Superman issues 460, 464, 465, Superman issues 41, 42 and Action Comics issues 651, 652.
Published by DC Comics
Welcome to another edition of Deciphering DC as we continue our look into Superman as he runs through the nineties. The tone and feeling of the soap-opera stylings of a weekly book had been established some time ago to give us a more or less continuous story, as certain authors did carry on and advance a few plot points in their own series.
This would continue throughout the nineties, until every one of these creators would leave their titles. Jerry Ordway was the first to leave, then Roger Stern and finally Dan Jurgens, signaling the end of an era, all to be replaced by Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, Stuart Immonen and Mark Schultz to begin the "new look Superman" (best epitomized by Ed McGuinness' version of Superman). But here, we're get ting ahead of ourselves.
Another bother about the nineties is that there are so many good stories that haven't been collected, resulting in gaps between trades, as a storyline had to have astounding sales figures before it finally got collected. When we last saw Superman, he had just recently returned to Earth with the Eradicator, a gift from the Cleric with a vision to preserve Krypton's heritage.
However, the artifact proved to be more trouble than it's worth, first creating a mind-meld with Matrix, an already fragile personality who thought itself to be Clark Kent. Shattered, Matrix leaves Earth. Subsequently, Jimmy Olsen's troubles began when he turned into elastic lad, again with the interference of the Eradicator. Intergang and the Brainiac-Luthor team are other menaces on the horizon. This is where the story contained in this volume begins.
Superman melted the Eradicator, throwing it into a frigid wasteland, believing it to be destroyed. However, a group of scientists stumbles onto it and under the Eradicator's control, start making a Kryptonian environment worthy of the last son of Krypton. When Superman resolves to stop this, he is controlled by the Eradicator, resulting in the subsequent draining of his human personality, only to be replaced with a cold, calculating, soulless Kryptonian personality that threatens to get more dominant day by day.
Meanwhile, Draaga wants his revenge on Superman for cheating him of his glorious death in Mongul's arena (see review of Superman: Exile for details). Also, Lobo is offered a bounty for Superman and is headed for Earth as well now. On Earth, Clark Kent is offered the job of Editor at 'Newstime', a magazine owned by Colin Thornton. The rift between Lois and Clark grows.
The dominance of the Eradicator's Kryptonian personality makes Clark detach from his friends and colleagues at the Daily Planet, Lana Lang and even Ma and Pa Kent. Maxima, who made her first appearance shortly before the events in this book, is back, but this time, this Superman turns out to be something she wasn't looking for. Also, Superman shuns his natural garb to wear something more befitting his Kryptonian ancestry.
The story is top notch. It's really difficult to make out who wrote in what sequence, as the ball passes around pretty smoothly. Emil Hamilton and Maxima are excellent characters, and it is good to know that they'll be around for a while. Dan Jurgens is getting stronger here, but Kerry Gammill and Jerry Ordway churn out equally wonderful work. Hints of worse things to come, as we see a spaceship with four scientists in orbit.
This one is long since out of print. The title is pretty misleading, as the "origin" of the Eradicator has been done properly in the preceding trade, 'Exile'. This book collects the 'Day of the Krypton Man' story, and should have been called something like that. It would have been helpful if earlier encounters with the Eradicator and Maxima would have been collected. After all, the last trade was around fourteen issues worth, and here we get a little less than seven. Also, the most disappointing thing ever - no cover reprints.
Rating: 8.5 / 10.
I love the nineties stuff, and miss a lot of it. I bought this trade assuming that the entity we know as the Eradicator from the later nineties makes it's first appearance. But no, just the artifact causing some serious brouhaha. It's still a good read. Go and grab it now.
Previous articles in the series:
- Superman : Exile
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Aalok Joshi is a total fanboy and claims to read everything in the comics genre but American comics and Syndicated strips totally win him over. He has been reading comics since he was 5 and started off with Indrajal Comics. After his relatives started pestering him about changing his reading habits, he switched over to novels after junking his erstwhile collection. Gotham Comics, the Indian Authorized publisher of DC/Marvel brought him back in 2002 and he has stayed here ever since.
Now concentrating largely on DC and slightly on Marvel and few selected independents, he is interested and taking steps towards writing for the genre. He also dabbles in illustration and his dream is one newspaper style cartoon per day.
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